Before you panic that Fast Recruitment Websites are no longer going to sit as the kings of recruitment website design, know that the headline has nothing to do with us as a company, but rather a current issue within the world of recruitment.

According to research carried out by Glassdoor in 2016, the average interview process—let alone the time spent advertising, shortlisting, making an offer and the notice period a candidate often has to serve before starting the role—stood at 22.5 days. A year later, and despite technology proposing to help businesses in all sectors work faster and smarter, the process lengthened, to a 23.7-day average.

Some sectors are truly struggling to fill vacancies at the moment, despite both hirers and candidates reportedly keen to get cracking as soon as possible.

So, what’s the reason for the hold-up if neither party wants to waste any time?

Artificial intelligence and psychometric tests slow down the interview process, as does finding slots in people’s busy, 24/7 lives where both parties can come together for interview—even if this is via Zoom. It’s costly for companies to make bad hires; essential tests and measures, therefore, aren’t likely to go away any time soon.

Long recruitment processes risk candidates giving up and applying for alternative roles. It can also give an unconscious, and often unintentional, signal to the candidate that the company isn’t the right fit for them. The same goes for unnecessary hurdles the candidate has to overcome, like those we talked about in this article.

Is it unfair for candidates to expect fast turnarounds at the moment? After all, a lot of companies are still finding their way after the upheaval the pandemic brought in its early days. Brands are still adapting, pivoting, strategising, whilst still trying to fight fire on a day-to-day basis. Would you want to be in their shoes? For instance, do they recruit for right now, or do they try and plan ahead for what the workload may be a few months down the line? What if another lockdown occurs?

Of course, some roles can be filled more quickly, due to the nature of the work. Roles in retail, customer service, leisure and hospitality tend not to have lengthy recruitment processes; on the flipside, however, they do all feature high staff turnover rates. Overall, they probably spend almost as much time on recruitment than other sectors, because they have to hire so often.

It also depends on the seniority of a role—the further up a career ladder you go, it’s likely that you would encounter more scrutiny as a candidate and be expected to meet more people. Second, third, fourth, even fifth interviews or more, aren’t uncommon. Again, such meticulous examinations and frequent meetings can result in the candidate giving up and going elsewhere.

Google assessed their hiring process recently and found that four interviews was the optimum amount to accurately assess which candidate was the best fit for the role on offer—even that may sound excessive to some jobseekers.

Hirers shouldn’t assume that their painstaking work, deciding who to employ, should be a closed off process…studies have shown that, if candidates aren’t kept abreast of developments between one interview and the next, almost four-fifths will simply take it as red that they’ve been unsuccessful and will write off the opportunity and look elsewhere. Such poor communication could also signify ineffective command and a lack of autonomy within the organisation, which could be the impression potential employees get if a company drags their feet to make a decision. Yes, making a bad hire is a concern, but if a company is unintentionally turning away/putting off top talent because of its indecisiveness, it will lose out anyway.

Though it’s easy to see the issue from both sides, given that recruitment is feeling the pressure to fill roles fast, and with a talent pool that’s apparently reducing by the minute, any initiative that could speed up the hiring process would be worth applying at the moment…